


The Rot Beneath

by Elphaba_descending



Series: Leaves of Change [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Disturbing Themes, F/M, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 22:12:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12263097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elphaba_descending/pseuds/Elphaba_descending
Summary: Voldemort is dead and buried, his worst followers behind bars, but everyone seems to have forgotten about the monsters that wear politician’s smiles and the things that go bump in the night. When the Wizarding World once again turns to Harry, the Harry they find longer fits into the shoes of a hero. Will he find the spark he’d happily traded for normality?





	The Rot Beneath

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt by FlightofFancy32. A nod to beta DreamingtheMelody. Constructive criticism is welcome

The Rot Beneath

5:00pm

It was the first Sunday dinner in the newly expanded Burrow family kitchen. It was already filled with the clink of dishes and peals of laughter. Somehow even with the aid of magic the children’s faces were still peppered with multicolored splashes of paint.

Harry could barely keep himself from slumping in his chair he was so exhausted. Between Auror duties, his children, and helping out with all the construction Harry was more than a bit stretched thin. But whenever he put his left foot down on the fresh white tile he felt an invigorating burst of pride. Arthur was right it was much better mismatched.

    

     When they had first begun, Harry had, of course tried to make it match the existing kitchen. “What are you doing?” Arthur had asked when Harry was on the ground with bits of sample wood littered around him.  
     “I’m going to order more of the same wood for the floors.”  
Arthur tilted his head “But if you do that, how can you tell what part you added?” Harry froze, too afraid of offending his father in law to even move.  
     Arthur placed a hand on Harry’s shoulder “Walk with me son.” Harry followed Arthur up the stairs until they reached the very top. He pointed to what used to be Bill’s bedroom. “My father Septimus Weasley built that when I married Molly.” He coughed, “Molly and I were a bit _enthusiastic_ about starting a family of our own.” The addition he indicated was attached to the attic and actually hung out much further than the rest of the house.  
     They went back down the stairs, this time with Arthur calling out names and adding greats until they reached the ground floor and the kitchen again. Arthur pointed out the kitchen window to the shed that used to hold the Ford he and Ron had crashed. “I built that.” Then he turned Harry around to the framework of the kitchen addition and placed both hands on Harry’s shoulders.  
     “My son, Harry Potter built that.”

The sound of the floo somehow found its way through the din. “Oh, that must be Bill and Fleur, thank goodness, I was starting to get worried.” Molly got up to greet her eldest son and his family.

“Bill! Fleur! Victoire! Dominique! Where’s little Louis? We need everyone here so they can put their handprint on the new family tree, Harry’s idea.” She said in a beaming voice.

Harry blushed before the rest of her words registered. A bunch of unrelated cases linked together in his tired mind and suddenly he was not tired, not tired at all.

“Louis has gone missing” Harry whispered through numb lips.

The laughter died like a ripple flowing outwards, until everyone at the table was staring at him in horrified silence.

Molly was crying in the next room. Arthur got up to comfort her. Harry, slowly like he had aged a century in a heartbeat, got up too. The sound of dozens of chairs sliding back followed him.

“ ‘Arry” Fleur said. “’Ou ‘ave álwayz zurprized me. I know ‘ou vill find my zittle boy.” She reached for his hand. Her eyes were so full of hope, they burned him.

Harry did not take her hand. “Children have been going missing. None of them have been found.” Molly started crying harder.

“How many?” Arthur said.

“Twelve, that I know of so far” Everyone started talking at once, but Bill’s voice cut through them all.

“Why have I not heard of this? I would never have brought Louis with me to work if I had known that Diagon was unsafe!”

“The wizarding children who have gone missing have all been war orphans. The Ministry wasn’t too keen on finding what they considered to be drains on the system.”

“That’s horrible!”

“But if no one was looking – “

“ **I** _was looking_!” He growled. Harry didn’t even recognize his own voice. No one really thought of Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived, as a war orphan.

“Maybe the ministry wants to keep this quiet but you could have warned _us_! It could have easily been James or Al!” Ginny gripped their two sons tightly to herself.

“I wasn’t thinking! I’ve been tired!” He hadn’t wanted to think about it. He had been happy. He had finally had the family he’d always wanted.

“Everyone calm down!” George spoke up for the first time that night. He had been quiet since putting his and Fred’s handprints on the family tree. One blue one green, one left one right. He had refused to wash the green from his right hand after he had placed it under Fred’s name. “This is about Louis! What are we going to do about – “George’s voice choked off.

Harry had closed his eyes; he thought of George’s green hand, Fleur’s hand reaching out to him, Arthur’s hands on his shoulders ‘my son…’, each memory a leaden weight on his shoulders. When he opened his eyes everyone except Ron and Hermione took a step back. “Officially there’s nothing I can do until he’s been missing for at least 24 hours.”

“Harry!” A motley of voices yelled, outraged.

“However, there’s plenty that we can do unofficially” he continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted.

“Bill I’m going to need a recent picture of Louis” Bill nodded slowly. Harry couldn’t look at Fleur.

“We’re going to send out a search party, groups of two, and I only want people who I know can handle themselves.” He took a deep breath “Ginny can you contact the old DA? See how many are willing to help us out.”

“You know that they will all come if you ask them to” Hermione said.

Harry nodded, “Then I’m asking.”

“The nonfighters need to stay and protect the children. Ron, do you know whose wards are the strongest?”

“Grimmauld Place, Longbottom Manor,” Ron hesitated but the strategist in him made him add “Malfoy Manor.”

“Right, someone will need to warn them too.” Harry paused “Grimmauld Place is no good, not for children, the dark magic lingering is too dangerous. Ask them both if they’re willing to spare a few rooms.”

“Hermione I need you to go to Luna and leak the story to the Quibbler. I’ll be over later to give details. Leave my name out of it this time.”

“Where will you be?”

“I’m going back to the Ministry to look up those case files. I need to figure out what we’re up against.”

\---

5:30pm

When Harry walked through the front door of the Burrow, his arms burdened with files, he could hear Ron arguing with Neville on the floo.

“I let creatures into my wards for my plants. I need pollinators and food for the carnivorous ones. The children won’t be safe at my place.”

“Louis disappeared in broad daylight. It’s some twisted person or a group not some animals!”

“But you said that it’s only attacking children, right? Lots of animals attack the young and the infirm, they’re easy prey. Just the other day something got to one of my early cabbages. “

“What do cabbages have to do with – “

“If Neville thinks that it’s not going to work, then I trust him” Harry but in when he turned a corner and could see them. “Thanks Neville.”

“Call me when you’re ready to begin searching.” Neville’s head popped away from the enchanted floo flames.

Harry slammed the files down next to the sofa Ron was sitting in. “What the hell was that Ron!?” 

Harry continued in a more normal tone of voice. “There are other dangers in the world besides whoever’s causing the disappearances. It’s the same reason why I don’t want the kids at Grimmauld Place, that house is _cursed_.” 

Ron mumbled something unintelligible. “What?”

“I said I didn’t want to ask Malfoy for nothing.”

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose, normally he might even sympathize with Ron, but lately a grimness had settled across his thoughts that he had hoped he’d left behind with the war.

“That’s okay, I’ll talk to Malfoy. Could you have a look at those files? I’ve read most of them a hundred times and what I really need is a fresh pair of eyes” Harry didn’t wait for Ron’s response, he grabbed a pinch of floo powder and threw it into the flames, “Malfoy Manor” Harry called out.

The flames turned an unwelcoming purple so Harry sat back in a well-worn arm chair and waited. Not long later, the head of a homely house elf popped into their fireplace. “What is yous wanting with Masters Malfoy?”

“Could you please tell Draco Malfoy that Harry Potter would like to speak with him?” The house elf looked at the fading lightning bolt scar on his forehead with bulging eyes. Then nodded her head so hard her large bat-like ears flopped with the motion.

Malfoy's blonde head quickly replaces the elf. “Hurry and tell me what this is about, Potter.”

“I have a bargain for you, Malfoy. Information for several rooms in your family manor for tonight…."

When Harry dropped the floo call with Malfoy, Ron wasn’t even pretending to look at the files. He was gaping open mouthed at Harry. Harry’s exhaustion from before returned and dragged his eyes closed. “Just say it Ron.”

“When did you become such a Snake?”

Harry was surprised to feel a spark of anger under the layers of resignation that had built up over years working for the Ministry. “Not all the Voldemort supporters wound up in Azkaban, Ron. Sometimes I need to work with people who hate me, sometimes I need something from a former Slytherin _I_ don’t like. I've had to crawl on my belly, just to maybe help one person. If you don’t like my methods, then you’re free to leave Rose somewhere else for the night.” Harry knew he was being unfair to Ron. Ron, suspended as he was in a perpetual childhood at the twin’s joke shop, could never understand why Harry had changed.

Harry got up and walked to the fireplace. “The Quibbler”

\---

7:00pm

The apple trees in the Weasley orchard had already turned red and brown, and were weeping leaves onto the heads of the would-be searchers.

The crowd was larger than Harry had thought it would be. “Who are they?” Harry asked Ginny while she was organizing the aerial flyers “Bill’s curse breaker friends.” He should’ve guessed that. Sun beaten and savage, they stood in a knot around Bill.

Even though by now, all of their children were safely tucked away behind his formidable family wards, no one wanted to pair with Malfoy. He stood there, back straight, bored expression on his face while the crowd parted around him. The strangers partnered with themselves until finally when it seemed as if he had no choice, Harry walked up to him. “Come on, you’re with me.”

Now that everyone was teamed up he could give out assignments. Harry turned to the aerial fliers. There were only four of them: Angelina, George, Charlie, and Ginny; each with a racing broom in hand and a dosing crystal around their necks. Their best fliers. The dosing crystals were treated with the same spells as a post owl egg and would light up if Louis was nearby. However, without an owl’s natural homing instinct they only had a range of 200 feet, so to make the best of them they had to fly dangerously low to the ground. It was still a safer option than attempting to outfly an actual owl in the dark. Harry looked each of them in the eyes and gripped their forearms, they already knew their assignments. They were going to floo to Shell Cottage in Cornwall then fan out. When he reached Ginny, he gave her a fierce hug and kissed her on her forehead. She had the longest and hardest route, due north along Britain’s gusty coast. “Fly low. Fly fast. Fly true.”

The rest were going to every floo hub and official apparition point and questioning if anyone recognized Louis or any of the other missing children. Harry tapped his throat with his wand ‘ _Sonarus_ ’ “Does everyone have a protean charmed photo of Louis Weasley? If you locate Louis or if you run into trouble just write on the back of it and everyone’s photo will change too.” Harry’s booming magnified voice echoed across the lawns.

“Where are we going?” Malfoy asked quietly next to him.

Harry tapped his throat again to cancel the spell. “The site where the first kid went missing. If it is a serial killer then that’s where they were likely the sloppiest, the victim might have even known their murderer.”

Malfoy said nothing, just watched him. “What?”

“You don’t think the children are alive?”

Harry let out a deep breath, then whirled around and kicked a pile of fallen leaves. He kicked and kicked until all that was left was the rot beneath. “No,” Harry said eventually. “The truth is that when a child goes missing a clock starts somewhere. 72hrs, three days. That’s all you have, after that it’s very unlikely that you’ll find them alive. So while I fully believe Louis is out there somewhere, the other children…” Harry was silent while the disturbed leaves settled to the ground around him and laid still.

Harry took Malfoy’s arm in a bruising grip and disapparated.

\---

The two of them appeared in an alley that led to a rundown street where the denizens walked hunched back and the smell of human misery was so pervasive Harry was momentarily back in his cupboard, locked in there for days on end without food, and the latch turns and the light’s so bright it burns his eyes and – “

“Why does he smell?” Piers asked Dudley.

“SHUT UP!” Harry grabbed Piers and shook him, and waited for the inevitable blows to rain down. But Piers wasn’t fighting back. Harry blinked, it wasn’t Piers at all, it was Malfoy staring back at him with wide frightened eyes.

Harry hastily stepped away then began leading him to their destination. Malfoy was probably the worst person to bring to a place like this, he kept gawking at the stockinged feet of those who could afford no better and acting as if the street grime would eat through his own expensive loafers and god forbid touch him. But at least after Harry’s outburst he kept his commentary to himself.

“L.O.W.?” Malfoy said. So much for Malfoy keeping his commentary to himself.

Harry looked up at the wrought-iron sign above the gate he was about to enter, ‘Langston’s Orphanage for Wizardlings.’ “I’m sure they didn’t mean it like that.”

Malfoy scoffed. “I’d swear you were a muggle-born sometimes.” The rustle of leaves blowing as they walked through the empty yard nearly drowned him out. 

When they went through the front entrance a deep bell tolled a solemn refrain. Harry thought he saw a small face peek at them from a doorway.

“Hi,” Harry bent down until he was eye-level with the youngling “could you get an adult who could tell us about Caelum Lestrange?” the shy girl nodded and retreated.

There was a sudden flair of pain near his neck. Harry reached back and realized it must be Malfoy right before he nearly flipped him over his shoulder. “What?” Harry bit out.

“ _Lestrange_?”

Harry stood up from his stooped position “You didn’t know that your cousin was missing?”

Malfoy choked. “To be sure, we are talking about Bellatrix Lestrange’s son?” Harry nods.

“I didn’t know that he existed, If I did he obviously wouldn’t be living _here_.”

It was Harry’s turn to look at Malfoy incredulously “Because your mother would _never_ discard her own sister or her sister’s child if they became inconvenient.” Harry paused before twisting the knife in further "how _is_ Andromeda, or your _other_ cousin Tonks?”

The sound of rapid footsteps drawing near caught Harry’s attention. A woman appeared in the same doorway the little girl had been. She had a careworn face and simple robes and searched around the two of them urgently “Caelum?”

“I’m sorry” Harry said, and he was, Harry was horrified. “There seems to be a misunderstanding, we were hoping you could help us get information about Caelum’s disappearance.”

The woman was silent for a beat too long. Then she let out an explosive breath. “You might as well come in and sit down.” They followed her into a room where there was a table somewhere underneath a gaggle of giggling children.

“Would you like something to drink? We can’t afford a luxury like tea, but we do have fresh picked mint leaves from the back that steep nice.”

“That will be fine” Harry said before Malfoy could say something unfortunate.

“The auror that was here before insisted that Caelum had ran away with the grocery money and that he’d be back as soon as the money ran out. So, what made them change their minds?” She spoke to the chipped cups in the cupboard. Her voice was rougher than it had been in the entryway.

“A total of thirteen children have gone missing spaced about a month apart. We’re trying to see if they’re all in any way connected.” When she finally turned to face them with the cups, her eyes were red, but her face was dry.

“Thirteen is still a lot to disappear before the Ministry…” her face turned bitter “ah, I see, someone _important_ went missing.”

“We’re not here with the ministry right now” Harry said.

Her eyes flashed to his scar “You’re not?” She said skeptically.

Harry restrained a flinch. There had been a time when Harry would have rather died than become the face of the Ministry. “Did Caelum have any acquaintances, an older person maybe?”

“Caelum was such a gentle boy. He was so tender with the little ones, but he didn’t get along with the older children. It was his silence. He almost never spoke unless spoken to and he never ever cried. Samantha told me that one of the boys broke his finger once, just bent it back until it snapped, and his expression didn’t even change.” The three of them shuddered and tried not to think about what he must have gone through before he'd reached the orphanage. “So no, I don’t think he had any acquaintances that I didn’t know about.”

\---

8:30pm

“Was _who_ in my shop?”

Harry pulled out a photo of Caelum from the file. “Oh him, I never knew his name, he never spoke. He was memorable though, he had the most sorrowful eyes I’ve ever seen, even for an orphan. His caretaker came by and asked if anyone had picked up the order for the orphanage and I said he had already. At the time, I’d thought that they’d just missed each other, but then I never saw him again. I had wondered what happened to him. No other aurors ever came by here looking for him.”

“Do you know which way he went?”

The grocer waved behind them. “The same way you guys just came in.”

“Thank you, I know that this was a while ago but you’ve still been a big help.”

When they left the shop, Draco broke his silence. “What do you mean he was a big help, the guy told us nothing that we didn’t already know!”

Harry counted down from ten in his head. “We know that he definitely disappeared between here and the orphanage, and that he was laden with groceries at the time. If he was going to make any detours he would have made them before picking everything up.” Harry looked up at the night sky, this far into the city there were no stars, and the buildings secreted the moon. “If I had been given this case a year ago, I probably could have found him from that alone.”

Malfoy was uncharacteristically subdued “I’m sorry I snapped, I know it’s not your fault, it’s just, I want to find him. I want to find my cousin. I want to make him smile, I want to hear him laugh. And you think that he’s already dead.”

4:30am Day Two

The dawn was still a long way away when they returned to the Burrow. Molly was going to every searcher pair as they arrived with a warm cup of tea and asking for news.

When she reached him, Harry knelt and gave her a gentle hug. Losing a son to the war had aged her; at times like now, it was hard to believe that only seven years ago, this grandmother had taken down one of the most notorious dark witches of their time. “I’m sorry” he said. “But now that it’s been 24 hours I can file a missing person report at the Ministry and….” Molly patted him on the back. “I know that you’ll do your best.” She placed a cup of tea in his hands and moved on to the next pair.

\---

9:53am Day Two

“You can’t just barge into the Minister’s – “Harry shut the door firmly in the secretary’s face.

Kingsley sighed, “Rubards warned me that you might be headed my way.”

Harry stared at Kingsley sitting on a cushy leather chair in a spacious office framed by gilded books and felt like he was seeing him for the first time. “You knew.”

“Twelve children – “

“Thirteen, thirteen children” Harry whispered.

“Thirteen children vanish into thin air, of course I heard about it.”

Harry couldn’t breathe, he felt like all the air had vanished from the room. He had been so certain he knew how this meeting would go. “Then why isn’t anything being done Kingsley?”

“Something is being done about it, you.”

“I never asked for this!”

Kingsley laughed, he actually laughed! “You mean someone made you pick up those neglected files?” He became serious again “Tell me Harry, how long was it before the Weasleys put you back on your pedestal? It doesn’t matter if you choose it, while the world still thinks of you as a hero they’ll always bring you their problems.”

“I’m in over my head Kingsley, I didn’t even realize that they were connected until Sunday.”

Kingsley waved his concern away. “You’ll crack this case. This case will make your career. The Wizarding World’s most deadly peacetime serial killer? who targets children no less? They’ll make you Head Auror for this. You have time, no one important has gone missing yet.”

Harry wanted to say that they were all important. Harry wanted to put a permanent sticking charm on all the children’s pictures and hang them up on these walls so that Kingsley had to see what Harry saw every day when he walked into his office, their guileless faces smiling at him, unaware that some short time later they would be gone from the world. If he was still seventeen, Harry would have. He might have even destroyed Kingsley’s office for good measure. But Harry knew that he had lost that right, knew that he had turned his head to too many injustices, knew, that he was no longer a hero. So instead he said “Bill and Fleur’s son went missing on Sunday”.

Kingsley scoffed, Harry wondered if he knew how much he sounded like Lucius Malfoy in that moment. “The son of a French national and a werewolf touched.”

“THE SON OF TWO WAR HEROES! They fought alongside me. They fought alongside you, Shacklebolt!” Kingsley flinched minutely.

“Becoming the Minister has changed you.”

“Becoming an auror has changed you too, Harry.” Harry spun around to leave, he didn’t feel the need to respond to something anyone with eyes could see.

“Harry.”

Harry, doorknob in hand, turned back to see Kinsley silhouetted against the fire “You either die a hero or you live to see yourself become the villain. Remember that.”

“No offense Minister, but that just sounds like an excuse to me. There are a lot of places in-between hero and villain where you can find yourself stuck.” Harry shut the door and left much more subdued than he had been going in.

\---

5:34pm Day Two

Harry, Hermione, and Malfoy were brainstorming possible motives, while Ron, Luna, and Neville marked the locations of where the children had been reported missing on a map of Britain and tried to see a pattern.

There were surprisingly few places where they could all meet. Hermione and Luna refused to step foot ever again in Malfoy Manor, the Burrow had a stifling atmosphere of grief and worry, Harry would rather burn Grimmauld Place to the ground than reuse it as a meeting place, and everyone else’s flats were too small. Which is how they found themselves at the Quibbler Magazine’s headquarters surrounded by nightmare fuel drawings and their supposed sightings taped to the walls.

Malfoy was leaning against the long meeting table they were all working on, pointing to their short but bleak list of motives. “I’m telling you, dark arts rituals are the most likely motive. The combination of innocents and the number 13 can’t be a coincidence.”

“It might be a coincidence, we don’t know for sure if we have an accurate count of the missing. Besides with your theory Louis is definitely dead.” And the child being dead was unacceptable to Harry.

Hermione frowned at their list. “The problem is that we can’t narrow any of these motives down, there are no bodies, there are no ransom notes, there isn’t a magical signature: the only active magic in the area Louis disappeared was Louis’ own allure.”

“Is that a clue? Why would Louis-- “

“For the last time, Neville! No one cares about your bloody cabbages!”

One solid punch to the gut from Neville, and Ron was down. With his meek demeanor, it was easy to ignore the thick muscle he'd built from working with his plants. He didn’t look very meek then. Neville stood there above Ron, visibly restraining himself for a long moment before he said “Find then, I’ll take care of it myself!” He was gone through the floo before anyone could snap out of their shock.

Ron tried to sit up. “Who on earth cares that much about some bloody plants?” He wheezed.

“You know, when Neville found out that Hanna couldn’t have kids he got really attached to his plants” Hermione said quietly.

Harry felt faintly sick. He hadn’t known that about Hanna. Between Neville’s parents and his grandmother, he probably wanted a family of his own as badly as Harry himself once had.

\---

12:01 am Day Three (Halloween)

“Louis! Where have you been, everyone’s been so worried about you!” Molly’s voice floated back to them while they feasted for All Hallows Eve.

Everyone rushed out to see Louis on the doorstep. Bill and Fleur ran to pick him up but their hands went straight through him. Louis was a ghost. “Look mamá, look papá! I float!” Beautiful, strong Fleur was sobbing on Bill's chest. Bill looked at a loss before rounding on Harry, furious. “You said that you’d save him!”

“I tried!” Harry cried.

“Some effort! Look at you enjoying a Halloween feast with us! You don’t deserve your own children!”

“Dad!”

“James!” Harry turned around in time to watch a shadow thing devour his eldest son.

“Not Albus!” Harry twisted around to see Ginny backing herself into a corner. He could not see her face, her long red hair was bent over the dark head of their two-year-old son in her arms.

“Step aside woman!”

“NO! Not Albus! Please!”

There was a high cold laugh and a flash of green light and Ginny was lying dead on the ground. Albus cried and cried before a shadow came and swallowed him whole.

In shock, Harry watched as one by one the Weasley family tried and failed to defend their children against an enemy they had never imagined before, until Harry alone stood amid the corpses of his adoptive family. The scent of death rose up from the ground.

“Hey look!” Louis’ ghost cried “It’s the Man-Who-Lived!”

\---

Harry awoke with a gasp. His heart was thudding so loudly that for a moment all he could hear was the pounding in his veins. Ginny was lying still next to him. Goosebumps broke out along his skin. Harry, as calmly and gently as he could, checked her pulse. She was fine. Of course she was fine, she was just sleeping. He kissed her shoulder and got out of bed.

He was going to Grimmauld Place’s library to look up things that consumed children. Both Neville and his subconscious seemed to think that it was some kind of creature, and he always listened to his gut. Harry grabbed a dousing crystal and a broom and flew out into the night.

\---

10:30am Day Three

Hermione threw down a thick tomb called ‘Dark Creatures for the Ages’ on top of all their careful notes and precious files.

“Listen to this” Hermione said excitedly.

“A hag is a child-eating creature with the appearance of a decrepit human female.”

Malfoy scoffed “Keep reading Granger.”

“The Hag is an XXX level creature” Hermione chewed on a strand of her hair in frustration. “Why that’s the same classification as Pixies, Doxies, and Kneazles!”

Harry was confused too. “How can something that they claim feeds on children have such a low classification?” 

“Hags have very little magic of their own. Sure, they’d love to get their hands on a wizarding child since they can absorb their youth and vitality, but they’d have to resort to trickery to achieve it, and even then, a young witch or wizard always has accidental magic to protect them.” Draco says with a minimum of sneering.

Ron added “All magical parents warn their children about a Hag’s tricks and how to spot them.”

“No one warned me!” Hermione looked as if she was working herself up to S.P.E.W. levels of indignation. “What about all the other muggleborns? What other dangers are out there that we aren’t told about?”

“Shh,” Ron bundled Hermione up in his arms and kissed her silent. “By the time you reach Hogwarts age and gain a wand, you are far beyond the capabilities of a Hag. They wouldn’t even attempt to attack a child that old.”

\---

.  
.  
.

It was late. Harry was up with the files as he had been for the past week. Despite the empty teacups scattered around his coffee table, the words swam in front of his eyes. Still, He would not sleep. He felt every passing second by like small stones thrown at him by a faceless mob. It had been a month since Louis had gone missing. His time was up, he had failed. Worse, if the pattern would keep, another child was due to go missing soon.

A door creaked open from further inside his home. A little while later the couch dipped next to him and he felt himself being lowered gently into someone’s lap. “Ginny” Harry murmured, and closed his eyes as she carded her fingers through his hair.

“Sleep,” she said. “You’re no good to anyone like this.”

Harry started to nod off, but there was something that he needed to do first. He got up, took their floo jar from the mantle and threw some into their winter fire. “Shell Cottage”

“Harry?” Ginny asked, confused.

“I’ve been selfish Ginny, I’ve prolonged this for too long. She needs closure. She needs to know that Louis is gone.”

A bear patronus came lumbering into the middle of their sitting room. Already large on all fours, the bear made of warm thoughts and shifting lights stood on its hind legs and dwarfed them all. “I’ve caught your child eater. Come, before I kill it.” the bear growled in Neville’s voice before shattering into a million dying embers.

“Did he just say child _eater_?” Bill and Fleur had come through the floo while he was distracted.

“Stay here with James and Al Gin-Gin.” For an instant harry was certain she would argue with him. The firelight caught the fierce glint in her eyes that he loved her for, then she let out a breath “Take Ron and Hermione with you at least.”

It took longer than Harry would have liked to get to Longbottom Manor. Bill and Fleur did fight on who would go back to their daughters at Shell cottage. When Fleur and Harry went to grab Ron and Hermione, Hermione insisted that they get Draco too.

In all the time that he’d known Neville, Harry had never been to his ancestral home. A house elf led them to the back where it was like walking into another world. Flora beyond his imagining, of every shape and color dotted the landscape, and since Harry knew that Neville experimented with plants, much of the foliage likely solely existed here, in this bauble of reality. At the heart of all this outlandish scenery, wrapped in thorn tipped vines was one of the most beautiful women Harry had ever seen. Her spun sunlight hair and her skin glowed faintly in the darkness.

“Neville, what are you doing, put the sword down!”

Harry shook himself. He hadn’t even noticed Neville standing next to the woman holding to her throat what Ron had mistaken as a sword but Harry knew to be a machete, familiar as he was with all manner of muggle gardening tools from his childhood.

“After Bellatrix and her ilk broke in and tortured my parents, my Gran strengthened our wards. No human, part human, or anything that was once a human can step foot on our lands without being invited first. Whatever this is in front of me, is no woman.” To emphasize his point, he shifted his machete, magic crackled along the blade, and a line of black blood dribbled down her- _its_ throat.

“Answer their questions truthfully and on my honor as a Longbottom your death will be swift and merciful.”

The first time harry had encountered full blooded veela, the veela were so far away they were practically specks on the horizon, and yet their allure still filled his head with flights of fancy. Tonight, Harry was standing no more than 10 feet away from this being when the world fell away.

The most beautiful image he could ever imagine was in front of him. All thirteen children alive, smiling, playing with dandelion fluff in a sunlit field. One of them looks up at him, it’s Louis. “We got lost, could you take us home?” they beckon.

“…RY”

“ ‘ARRY!”

Harry was on his knees, tears soaking his shirt, his hands stretched out before him as if in pleading. Harry took the deepest breath he could, his chest shook to contain it. Then he took another one, and another, on and on until he didn’t feel like he was on the verge of breaking apart at the seams.

Fleur was behind him, her very presence seemed to have negated whatever mind magics the creature had. “’Ou rezistad la best ‘arry” she said softly.

Harry found that hard to believe until he squinted through a haze of allure to find Hermione, Ron, and Draco all encased in vines a few precious feet from the creature and Neville.

“Wrong answer” Neville said.

The bindings on the not woman tightened until the thorns bit into her skin and oozed blood. When she screamed, Harry could see razor sharp, shark-like teeth in her mouth.

Harry wished he could leave Fleur’s side and see Neville’s face. If someone had asked him to describe Neville Harry would have said: Loyal, kind, determined, brave when it counted… cruel? Never. The not-woman’s endless tortured shrieks sounded as human as she looked. Harry’s hands shook. In many ways, Neville was his mirror, is this what he would have become had the world continued denying his dreams? ...No… Neville’s patronus was still a bear. This _was_ Neville. He had always been dangerous in the defense of someone that he loved, so the question was, who was he defending?

The haze of the allure faded away. The others fell out of their trances. “I will answer your questions!” the creature cried desperately.

“What are you?” Hermione, blessed Hermione, always asking the unimportant questions.

The creature’s lovely face twisted in distaste “A hag.”

The runes on Neville’s machete lit up warningly. “The truth” he repeated.

“You don’t look like a hag” Hermione insisted.

“My mother was a hag, my father-mother was a Veela. I thought that last bit was obvious though.”

Fleur was clearly frustrated by this line of questioning.

“Where iz my zon?”

The hag looked Fleur in the eye “Ah, you must be the veela boy’s mother. Did you know that when he felt my allure he thought I was you? ‘Mamá’ he called me. He screamed for you. Now I feel insulted, you are barely a veela.”

The hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stood up, he glanced at Fleur beside him. What he saw made him step away. There was something inhuman about her face, and her hair floated around her as if being beaten back by invisible wings.

“Where iz, my zon?” The barest hint of flames danced around Fleur’s fingers.

Reptilian black wings sprouted from the hag’s back as she let out a bird-like screech.

Neville repositioned his weapon so that the flat of the blade laid against her skin. Magic hung heavy in the air. ‘ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...Born as the seventh month dies_ …’ Harry couldn’t help thinking.

“He is still alive!” the hag panted, terror in her voice. “The Veela in me would not let him come to harm. I can take you to him if you let me go!”

They all froze. That was not the answer they were expecting.

“My cousin!” Draco shouted.

“Who are you?”

Draco pulled himself to his full height, but he did not look dignified as he normally did. With his hair bedraggled rather than carefully styled, and his outer robes thrown over his sleep clothes, he just looked lost and heartbreakingly desperate. “I am Draco Lucian Malfoy. My cousin was an eight-year-old orphan boy with black hair and blue eyes.”

Her eyes lit up with delight “Oh, you mean the broken boy! Yes, I remember him, the second child I ever ate, after my little brother. I had to keep the other children under my allure the whole time or else they’d fight me, but him, he just sat there. He did not beg and he did not scream, oh but his eyes! His eyes were a work of art. They were made for pain I tell you. I wanted to keep them you know, his eyes, but they lost all their luster when he died. I can take you to his bones if you let. Me. Go!” The last word was more screech than speech.

“CRUCIO!”

Neville had never been good with wand magic, and the Unforgivables were notoriously difficult to shield against, but Harry was still surprised when Neville stepped between the hag and the torture curse and fell to the ground screaming.

Harry and Ron both pulled their wands on Draco, but there was no need, Malfoy dropped the curse immediately.

Neville sank his machete into the earth and leaned against it for support. “I swore that her death would be merciful if she answered our questions, would you have me break my Word?”

“She doesn’t deserve mercy!”

“Then you of all people should be glad that not everyone gets what they deserve, Malfoy.”

Neville turned to Hermione. “Could you conjure a vial made of crystal for me?”

“No need Granger, I have one” Malfoy reached into his robes and pulled out something that they had seen a thousand times in the potions classroom. He rolled it over to Neville who was still twitching slightly from the aftereffects of the spell.

Neville smeared some of the hag’s black blood into the vial and stoppered it. “I now hold your life-blood in my hands, show them what you promised, and if you ever hurt another child I will track you with this and give you your promised death.” The vines released her.

“You’re not coming with us?” Hermione asked.

Neville shook his head. “I have something I need to do here.”

“We’re not going either.” Harry heard himself say.

Harry pulled out from his auror robes, his standard issue shrunken broom. “We only have one broom and Fleur and Draco should go.” It was true they had no choice to but to fly, hags didn’t have enough magic to apparate or create portkeys, but Harry just didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to see a pile of bones so soon after imaging them all safe and alive. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he promised himself he’d go and gather the remains and bring the children home to their families in boxes. Tonight, he would sleep.

As Harry was standing in the Longbottom fireplace, a word away from his bed, he thought that he heard faintly the cries of a newborn babe.

\---

"Uncle Harry!"

Bill Fleur and all three of their children had come by, but Harry only had eyes for Luis. He’d had so many dreams that started like this that he was half afraid that if he touched Luis he'd disappear.

Luckily none of the children had any such hesitations and a very real Luis was attempting to crush his legs. Harry bent down on one knee to give them all a proper hug.

Soft, everything is soft, from the weak morning light, to Bill and Fleur's easy smiles, to Luis' curly baby hair. A soft moment to power a hundred Patroni.

James, Al, and Ginny sleepily wander in to see what all the commotion is about.

Fleur shooed her brood over to their cousins and told them to go play in the other room.

Ginny stays in the doorway with arms crossed and a stubborn set to her chin, eyes following the children but clearly listening.

"How is he?"

Fleur begins to laugh, great hiccupping laughs that she tries to smoother in Bill's shoulder. Bill answers. "Apparently Luis was having so much fun he didn't want to come home. He and the Hag were on a quest to find the gates of Faerie."

Given the fact that Faerie was no place for a child, or anything human for that matter, Harry couldn’t understand Fleur’s sudden mirth. Then again, she was probably just relieved that Luis was alive and well and happy. When Harry thought of it like that he couldn’t help smiling a little himself, then Bill was smiling too.

Their children burst back into the room. The four younger children muffled their laughter and tried to hide while a disgruntled looking Victoire chased all of them across the room.

Harry momentarily wrapped himself with feelings of family and belonging before he got up and joined the fray.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The epilogue of this ficlet is supposed to be the epilogue of Deathly Hallows, with Harry and Draco nodding to each other across platform 9 3/4, and Harry telling his youngest son that it's ok to be a Slytherin.

**Author's Note:**

> The epilogue of this ficlet is supposed to be the epilogue of Deathly Hallows, with Harry and Draco nodding to each other across platform 9 3/4, and Harry telling his younger son that it's okay to be a Slytherin.


End file.
